Friday, March 13, 2015

#Wikidata - #African #American

Harvesting Wikipedia has its perils. It is easy and obvious to make statements about occupation, employer, alma mater. Subjects like nationality, religion, ethnicity are problematic. It is like the image says... you are not African American when you are from the UK but how do you tell the difference?

The problem is very much that stigma is involved. Harvesting such information on the "auto pilot" brings those issues to the front in Wikidata. People from all over the world are involved. The "best" practices of every Wikipedia raises its heads, its questions, its bias.

Not harvesting certain data is "safe" and, it is appropriate for me. It is not that I do not see the issues, it is more that it is not for me to do.
Thanks,
GerardM